


Red

by rainbowanatomy



Series: Steinoru [3]
Category: Runaways (TV 2017)
Genre: F/F, mention of abuse/bruises but no additional details
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 10:10:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17620484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainbowanatomy/pseuds/rainbowanatomy
Summary: Losing her was blue like she’d never knownMissing her was dark grey all aloneForgetting her was like trying to know somebody you never metBut loving her was red





	Red

**Author's Note:**

> Tina looks ridiculously good in red, and Janet thinks so, too (and so do I, holy heck). This is told from Janet's POV. Sort of takes place during s1e8 Tsunami. This is if Janet and Tina had the affairs, not Janet and Robert.

Unlike some of the geniuses she’s met in her life, Janet Stein is very meticulous about organization. In her head, she categorizes everything, and that thinking spills into her everyday life. She chops her vegetables in rainbow order, and organizes her closet in the same manner. Her make up is separated by brand and use, and she’s never owned a messy nightstand in her life. She doesn’t _need_ to do these things, and when she’s in a rush and cuts green peppers before tomatoes, or puts her only yellow shirt with her blues, she doesn’t care. But when she can do it her way, she does. She likes the way the colors flow.

She organizes her lovers by the colors of the rainbow as well.

* * *

Her first boyfriend, in middle school, before she appreciated order as much as entropy, and before she could call another person a “lover”, was beige, plain and simple. Her second was gray like rain on asphalt. In high school, when she began exploring what it meant to be loved, she had a boyfriend who was a pale pink, the sky at the start of sunrise. Once, in her freshman year of college, she’d drank too much and the girl dancing next to her kissed her without warning. Yellow – hazardous, ‘do not cross’ tape, the warmth of the sun beating on her face. She had had a boyfriend at the time, purple, royalty, holier than thou, who grinned a little too hard when she told him of the encounter. It ended soon after that. She’s never liked purple since. 

She met Victor Stein in her lecture hall. When he kissed her after their first date, she tasted black as pitch as night. She should have remembered then that, as brilliant and inviting as the darkness of a forest at night is, it also holds invisible threats, howls in the moonlight, and the sound of steps behind you. But she was born and raised in Los Angeles and never spent time in the woods. It came as a shock when Victor’s night sky, holding all the stars she could never see in the LA sky, caved in on her. When she came to her senses, they’d already had their son (someone would love him like the color orange – exciting, unexpected, full). She always found it ironic when her bruises first bloomed on her skin, black.

Then she met Tina Minoru. It was at the first PRIDE meeting that the woman, a tech wizard, an up and coming billionaire, caught her eye. Tina was wearing black lipstick, the same shade as her hair, and flashed her a smile with teeth so white they made her eyes hurt. It was over ten years before she knew, first hand, that Tina had a color, too. After Amy Minoru’s funeral, at the reception in the Minoru household, she wandered into the garden. That child had been a special one – the oldest of the 7 children of PRIDE parents – and Amy had opened up to her once or twice, about boys and asked about science, especially physics and astrology. Like Gene and Alice’s deaths, Amy’s death made her blood run cold.

She found Tina on a stone bench, hidden among the bushes and flowers, motionless, a predator watching its prey, an untouched pond. She sat as gently as she could, trying not to disturb the pristine water. Tina tilted her head an inch towards her, the only indication that she knew she was no longer alone. Janet reached out a tentative hand to the one on the cold rock, knowing that Tina was never much of a touchy-feely person. When Tina didn’t move away, rather turned to face her, she laced their fingers together, her white nail polish contrasting with crimson, those dark brown eyes burning into hers. She started some kind of apology, sympathy, something, when Tina kissed her. She reacted the only way someone like her could react to being kissed by someone like Tina; she kissed back. 

It was tender at first, building to some frenzied tempo; Tina’s free hand slid into her blond hair, and crimson nails dug in. It was over before Janet could get enough. Tina pulled back, loosened her grip, slid her hand under Janet’s chin. Dark brown eyes met deep blue for a moment that lasted seconds or years. She was still catching her breath when Tina let go of her face and stood, still silent, and walked back out through the bushes and flowers, out of her sight. She swiped the back of her hand across her mouth, trying to wipe Tina’s lipstick off.

Tina Minoru was _(is)_ red. A warning. Lust, and blood, and passion. The color of Janet’s bottom lip when Tina bites a little too hard. The color of Tina’s back when Janet can’t help but bring the woman closer. And sometimes, she thinks, when she's alone grocery shopping or when Tina kisses her bruises ever so softly, _love_. She had never felt a color so vividly.

A week after that kiss, she got a text from Tina: GPS coordinates. She went despite everything bad associated with red. She went because red tastes like strawberries and peppermints and first crushes. She kept going back because Tina kissing her, hands dancing over her body, touching her like she was sacred, tastes so different from Victor. Somewhere over the years, Tina switched from black lipstick to red, and even after Janet showers, there was always faint traces of the iconic color on her neck, inner thighs, her own lips. They never talked about Victor, Robert, Amy, or PRIDE. Instead, they talked about gravitational waves or computer software or the years before they met.

Tina walking into the PRIDE Gala in a tight red dress made her head swim with the color. Her cheeks went red when Tina’s eyes swept over her body in the way they always did when Janet was naked in front of her. It reaped the same results as it always did, that time in a quick, hurried way they had figured out worked for both of them over the two years they’d been sleeping together. Victor cornered her after, jabbing a finger at the lipstick on her pulse point. His eyes were black, and he only stopped to clutch at his head. Later that night, he revealed his (correct) suspicions of the affair to everyone in attendance and later, in private, his brain cancer was brought to light.

When Janet helped Victor after he collapsed in front of everyone, instead of going after a red-with-embarrassment Tina, she knew it was over. She was the only thing standing between her husband and her son, and she would do anything for her son, and in her husband’s time of recurrence, her son needed her more than ever. She spouted words she thought they’d want to hear, but they rang hollow in her chest. That night, she texted Tina, something like an apology or an explanation or both. She didn’t get a response. She went to bed with red lipstick still on her skin, but in her head, she switched Tina over to blue, one like she’d never known. Her days went dark gray, between trying to get her son to forgive her and Victor’s violent mood swings. She wanted to explain herself to Tina at Atlas Academy’s open house, but got fixed with a stare so empty she couldn’t move.

It’s not until she was standing with the gun in her hand, still warm from being fired, that red returned to her life. She was still shaking, eyes clouded black. Her son was crouched on the floor, curled up in pain, and Victor was slumped on the ground, bleeding. Somewhere in all this mess, PRIDE showed up, even Tina, whose dark brown eyes were cold, and the gun got passed around. Jonah showing up made the nightmare even worse. He told her to get in the box, to sacrifice either her life or her son’s, and of course there’s no question of which she would choose.

“I’ll go,” she said, voice quivering, “I’ll get in the box.” A hand took hers, fingers lacing, and she looked down at the contact. Crimson over white. “Tina,” she breathed, meeting those dark brown eyes, “What are you doing?”

“I can’t let you get in the box, Janet,” Tina murmured, in the same tender tone she saved for her when they were laying in bed, “You know that.”

“Then we get Chase,” Jonah said with a heavy sigh. Each and every PRIDE member shouted their disapproval (if there is one thing they share, it’s the pure expanse of the green Earth they feel for their children). Somehow, something got sorted out.

* * *

She now finds herself in her study, pouring herself a drink, her brain trying to process the evening, and how it could go this terribly wrong. Chase asks for a drink, too; after the evening they’ve had, she can’t find it in herself to say no. She starts to say something to her son, some apology, some explanation, when his eyes go wide, staring over her shoulder. She turns to follow his gaze, and there’s Tina Minoru, brown eyes sweeping over her body.

“Do you mind I borrow your mom for a moment, Chase?” Tina asks.

“Like you have been behind everyone’s backs?” Chase snorts, but gives a shrug of his shoulders, taking a long sip from his glass. Everyone knows when Tina Minoru asks you for something, you almost _always_ find yourself saying yes.

She takes Tina up to her bedroom, where the woman has never been before. Tina sits her down on the bed, and pulls her blood-spotted shirt over her head. Before she can say anything, the woman is rooting through drawers, pulls out a clean shirt, and holds it out to her.

“It’s funny,” she finds herself saying as she accepts the shirt, putting it on, “You normally try to get my clothes _off_ me.”

A small smile twitches across red lipstick as Tina leans against her dresser.

“I miss you,” Tina starts, just as Janet goes,

“I’m sorry.” Janet laughs once. Tina’s gaze holds her in place as the woman steps silently across the floor towards her spot on the bed, a predator stalking its prey. Tina pauses over her, putting a hand under her chin to tilt her head up, then leans down, whispering,

“I’m sorry, too.”

It’s slow at first, shaky after a week apart, but quickly deepens into years familiarity. This kiss tastes like her favorite kind from Tina: coding and chemistry and carnations. It tastes like longing and red starbursts and, now that she thinks of it, _love_. It’s over before she wants it to be, but Tina’s brown eyes are so soft on her that she doesn’t care about kissing or touching; her heart’s beating loud enough just being next to her. Tina kisses her again anyway, and she whispers ‘ _red_ ’ in between breaths. Tina pulls back, chuckling,

“What?”

“I should have told you years ago…” Janet whispers, “Red looks so beautiful on you,” She’s rewarded by Tina kissing her again and again and again. The nightmare downstairs recedes for the time being as she pulls Tina into her lap, the pair sinking into her red silk sheets.

**Author's Note:**

> Song: Red - Taylor Swift


End file.
